Alva Myrdal Quotes

The intellectual development of man, far from having gotten men away from war, has, rather, on the contrary, brought them to a refinement always more perfected in the art of killing. They even came to raise the methods of slaughter to the rank of "science".

War is the science of destruction.

Mankind, his brain has embraced so many amazing things, and yet we're still beating each other over the heads with clubs, excepting the bullets now, one bullet can wipe out an entire city.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

The nexus between modern science and violence is obvious from the fact that 80 percent of all scientific research is devoted to the war industry and is frankly aimed at large-scale violence.

It were indeed to be wished that our art had been less ingenious, in contriving means destructive to mankind; we mean those instruments of war, which were unknown to the ancients, and have made such havoc among the moderns. But as men have always been bent on seeking each other's destruction by continual wars; and as force, when brought against us, can only be repelled by force; the chief support of war, must, after money, be now sought in chemistry.

The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them.

From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.

A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster.

I'm just baffled in the 21st century we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Oh, go in anywhere Colonel, go in anywhere. You'll find lovely fighting all along the line.

I like war.

Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.

A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.

Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

And, you see, we are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.